Editing, built in
By Chris B., who built Voice Memo Exporter · Updated August 2026
TL;DR
Voice Memos has a built-in trim tool on both iPhone and Mac: open a recording, choose Trim from its menu, drag the yellow handles around the section you want to keep or remove, then save as a new recording or overwrite the original. There's no dedicated split button, but repeating that same trim-and-save-as-new step once per segment turns one long recording into several separate ones.
Open the recording and tap the menu
Tap the recording in the list, then tap the three-dot menu, then Trim.
Drag the yellow handles
Move them to enclose the part you want, either the part to keep or the part to delete. Pinch to zoom the waveform for more precise placement.
Choose Trim or Delete, then Apply
Trim keeps only what's between the handles and discards the rest. Delete removes the highlighted section and keeps everything else.
Save Recording or Save as New Recording
Save Recording overwrites the original permanently. Save as New Recording keeps the original untouched and creates a second, trimmed copy, which is the safer default if you might want the untrimmed version later.
Open the recording in the Edit window
Select the recording, then two-finger click or tap it (trackpad or Magic Mouse) and choose Trim Recording.
Drag the yellow handles to set the range
The same handles as on iPhone, marking what to keep versus what to remove.
Trim or Delete, then Apply
Trim removes everything outside the handles. Delete removes everything between them.
Save Recording or Save as New Recording
The same choice as on iPhone: overwrite the original, or keep both by saving the edit as a separate recording.
There's no single button for this. The trim tool only produces one output at a time, so splitting a 90-minute recording into three parts means running the trim step three separate times: open the original, trim to roughly the first third, Save as New Recording, then reopen the original again, trim to the next third, Save as New Recording, and repeat for the last piece. It's exact and it works, but it's manual, and it gets tedious past three or four pieces.
In short: Splitting one recording into several means trimming the same original recording repeatedly, saving each piece as a new recording, since Voice Memos has no dedicated split feature.
Two practical reasons come up most. First, very long recordings, especially call recordings that run 45 to 60 minutes or more, have been reported to fail to transcribe, save, share, or copy properly in Apple's app; splitting into shorter pieces is one workaround. Second, a long recording produces a large audio file, and file size is what determines whether you can text or email it to someone; splitting it into smaller pieces can bring each one under a sharing limit that the whole recording exceeds.
One recording, trimmed once, takes a minute or two. A backlog of recordings you want cleaned up, or several long ones you need split into multiple pieces each, adds up fast, since every piece is its own open-trim-save cycle with no way to batch it. If you have a couple dozen memos, honestly, just do it by hand. The steps above will take you about twenty minutes and you don't need to buy anything.
Voice Memo Exporter runs the whole thing in one pass on your Mac: every memo exported, transcribed locally, and combined into one searchable Master Transcript. $49 early access, private by design.
If the only reason to split a recording is that a very long one won't transcribe cleanly in Apple's app, it's worth trying it as-is first with a tool that transcribes independently of Apple's own transcript view. Voice Memo Exporter transcribes locally on your Mac and isn't subject to the same in-app transcript limits, so a long recording may transcribe fine without any trimming at all. It doesn't edit or trim audio itself; its job is archiving and transcribing what already exists.
Not with a single button. Trim the original down to the first part and choose Save as New Recording, then reopen the original, trim to the second part, and Save as New Recording again. Repeat once per piece you want.
Only if you choose Save Recording, which overwrites it permanently. Save as New Recording keeps the original untouched and creates a separate trimmed copy instead.
If you saved as a new recording, the untouched original is still there. If you chose Save Recording and overwrote the original, the trimmed-out audio is gone and there's no built-in undo for it.
It can, for the length-related failures reported on very long or call recordings in Apple's app. It's worth trying the recording untouched first in a tool that doesn't share Apple's transcript limits before spending time splitting it.
No. It archives original audio unmodified and transcribes it; trimming and splitting are done in Apple's own Voice Memos app using the built-in tool described above.
Voice Memo Exporter runs this whole workflow in one pass on your Mac: every memo exported, transcribed locally, and combined into one searchable Master Transcript you own.
$49 until September 30, then $79. Buy before then and keep $49 forever. One-time purchase, no subscription. 30-day refund if it doesn't work for your Mac setup.
Not ready yet? That's fine.
Be first to hear what I build next, plus the occasional honest note on getting more out of your voice memos.
